...coming from someone who knows only because I've had to live with the constant "Are you any relation to...?" questions for the last 30 years or so:

It's Howie Mandel, not Howie Mandell.

Thank you.

His name is Will Ferrell, not Will Farrell.

This is one of the funniest home-made videos I've seen in ages.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA&mode=related&search=

The only other thing I found near as funny, are the outtakes of director _ absolutely losing his $#!+ at Lily Tomlin on the set of "I Heart Huckabees".

http://youtube.com/watch?v=F86s4Vq59Ks

Those are my votes for great youtubery...

The "chickens" return again. That's the minor stylistic offense of Havrilesky this time around. The major one is making a big deal out of National Bingo Night...based on its promos alone, since she hasn't seen the show!

Mind you, I think the show will stink on ice, too. But I haven't seen it either. It might have some minor element on it that might make it interesting, like the Hispanic guy (is it Guillermo from Jimmy Kimmel Live?) who sadly moans "No Bingo..." or the bald British guy who's the host (if they had to get someone bald and British, why not get Richard O'Brien from Rocky Horror and add a touch of sneer?).

It would have been enough for Havrilesky to say "I think this will suck purple pulsating donkey dicks" or whatever cute homoerotic phrase she likes this week, and then move on to other things. But taking up the first third of her review...an entire page...to reviewing something that doesn't officially exist and she hasn't yet...is horribly bad judgment. Is she having that much trouble filling a column? Does she have a word count to meet or something?

Actually, SNL really is shit now.

The guy trying to do George Bush doesn't even get close. He doesn't look or sound like the Shrub. Dana Carvy did the worst impression of Bush senior, but it pales in comparison to the really lame ass take on junior.

Last week with host Payton Manning was perhaps THE WORST SNL I've seen in five years.

MAD TV dares to venture some off-beat stuff. SNL is better than a sleeping pill.

Mike Myers (not Meyers)

Sheesh!

...that's why it SUCKS. 30+ years on network TV = institution. Institutions just aren't funny (unless they're being mocked), they're safe. Safe just doesn't produce funny. Safe produces consistency that can be packaged, branded and sold. Yeah, it's soulless.

Of course you can't blame the talent since they're just making a career out of it, except a career kills any edge that might create funny or disrupt safe. If you want funny again you have to get actors, producers and comics that don't care about a career and have nothing to lose. That's not going to happen so SNL will never be funny again. They should just put it down.

That's where you just toss random artifacts into the story in lieu of writing a coherent plot arc. Never mind making any sense or even cobbling together anything that follows from A to B just add more characters! I for one hope the world really does get vaporized at the end.

A few years ago on a plane trip, I sat through an otherwise forgettable romantic comedy that had an unexpectedly unconventional ending. Instead of getting the girl and the big promotion, the protagonist, played by Topher Grace, realizes that everything in his life is based on greed and lies. So he dumps the girl (who was way too young for him anyway), quits his job (where he used sleazy tactics to get promoted) and moves out West to find himself.

I'm reasonably certain you're thinking of In Good Company. However, I'm pretty sure the romance between Topher Grace's character and Dennis Quaid's character's daughter is secondary to their working relationship / friendship, the main storyline.

... And that's pretty much all I can remember about it. :)

Actually, Scarlet's character dumps Topher because he gets way too serious for her.

metasailor, you beat me to it.

Also check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcidD2HFK8M

Kelly is fucking rad!

"First annual 'I Like to Watch' Comedy Festival"?

It's not "annual" until you've had it at least twice. Get some copy editors who know what they're doing, fer crap's sake.

You consider sucking "purple pulsating donkey dicks" to be "homoerotic"?! You must have quite an unusual sex life.

Geesh Heather, you have a tough audience!

Anyhoo. I have struggled with Heroes as well. But the last two episodes have been kick ass.

My only complaint with the show is Sylar. Moohinder (or the stupid cow, as I like to call him) had time to knock Sylar out, carry a dead Peter Petrelli and load him in a cab and drive him to mama, but didn't have the time to kill Sylar. Stupid writing. We know Moohinder made the decision to kill Sylar becuase he fired a gun at Sylar.

Secondly, Sylar bugs me because he is evil without standing for anything (kinda like Bush). The inept heroes can never kill him. He's like a cockroach with no reedemable characteristics and that makes it doubly frustrating when the heroes blow an opportunity to finish him off.

I think Linderman would be a much better adversary. He seems to have a plan. It's like Magneto. You could see him as the enemy, but you could also understand why he was acting the way he was.

Sylar, not so much.

I agree that people who automatically deride each season of Saturday Night Live as "the worst ever" probably aren't watching (or they're watching that episode when Rainn Wilson hosted), but for my money Amy Poehler's doing some of the funniest work in years on that show. Her Dakota Fanning talk show and impression of Nancy Grade have me in tears. I love her.

...SNL is actually funny again, probably for the first time in about eight years. And I'm stunned NBC is actually doing a salute to the 90s, because SNL was funny for only the first three years of that decade. The remaining seven years were a wasteland.

SNL has had three "hey-days": '75-'80, '82-85 and '87-'93. Aside from those eras the show has pretty much stunk. MadTV, on the other hand, has been consistently good since its launch waaaay back in the early 90s. Not a single season where you just wanted to throw up your hands in disgust.